The Bush administration was so adamant in its public statements against torture that CIA officials repeatedly sought reassurances that the White House officials who had given them permission to torture in the first place hadn’t changed their minds.
In a July 29, 2003, White House meeting that included Vice President Dick Cheney and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice, CIA Director George Tenet went so far as to ask the White House “to cease stating that US Government practices were ‘humane.’” He was assured they would.
The memo describing that meeting is one of several documents that were unclassified last year but apparently escaped widespread notice until now. Georgetown Law Professor David Cole called attention to the trove of documents on the Just Security blog.
The documents were apparently posted in December at ciasavedlives.com, a website formed by a group of former senior intelligence officials to rebut the newly released Senate report that documented the horrors that CIA officers inflicted upon detainees and the lies about those tactics’ effectiveness that they told their superiors, would-be overseers and the public.
The new documents don’t actually refute any of the Senate report’s conclusions — in fact, they include some whopper-filled slides that CIA officials showed at the White House. But they do call attention to the report’s central flaw: that it didn’t address who actually gave the CIA its orders.
As Cole writes:
The overall picture that the new documents paint is not of a rogue agency, but of a rogue administration. Yes, the CIA affirmatively proposed to use patently illegal tactics — waterboarding, sleep deprivation, physical assault, and painful stress positions. But at every turn, senior officials and lawyers in the White House and the Department of Justice reassured the agency that it could — and should — go forward. The documents reveal an agency that is extremely sensitive to whether the program is legally authorized and approved by higher-ups — no doubt because it understood that what it was doing was at a minimum controversial, and very possibly illegal. The documents show that the CIA repeatedly raised questions along these lines, and even suspended the program when the OLC was temporarily unwilling to say, without further review, whether the techniques would “shock the conscience” in violation of the Fifth Amendment. But at every point where the White House and the DOJ could have and should have said no to tactics that were patently illegal, they said yes.
The documents also illustrate how CIA officials, just like journalists and members of the public, had to decide whether to take the White House’s disavowals of torture at face value. Apparently the CIA, like many others, couldn’t believe the White House was flat-out lying.
Tenet, in a July 3, 2003, letter to Rice, requested that White House officials reaffirm that waterboarding and other so-called “enhanced interrogation techniques” were being done on their orders.
We request this reaffirmation because recent Administration responses to inquiries and resulting media reporting about the Administration’s position have created the impression that these techniques are not used by US personnel and are no longer approved as a policy matter.
Tenet cited, as an example, a June 2003 Washington Post story headlined, “U.S. Pledges Not to Torture Terror Suspects.”
According to the CIA memo that documented the July 29 meeting, Cheney “asked how the press could have gotten such an impression.”
CIA general counsel Scott Muller responded to Cheney by mentioning the February 2002 memo issued under George W. Bush’s name, titled “Humane Treatment of al Qaeda and Taliban Detainees,” which directed, “As a matter of policy, the United States Armed Forces shall continue to treat detainees humanely, and, to the extent appropriate and consistent with military necessity, in a manner consistent with the principles of Geneva.”
Muller also reminded Cheney of the time in June 2003 when deputy White House press secretary Scott McClellan, on the occasion of Bush’s obligatory proclamation on United Nations International Day in Support of Victims of Torture, had told reporters that “detainees are treated humanely and consistent with our values and consistent with our laws and consistent with our treaty obligations.”
According to the memo, National Security Council legal advisor John Bellinger explained to Cheney “that the press officer had ‘gone off script’, and had mistakenly gone back to ‘old’ talking points. The DCI [Director of Central Intelligence] stated that it was important for the White House to cease stating that US Government practices were ‘humane’ as that term is easily susceptible to misinterpretation. Bellinger undertook to insure that the White House press office ceases to make statements on the subject other than that the US is complying with its obligations under US law.”
The July 3 letter from Tenet to Rice reminded her that the White House had been in on all this since the beginning: “The Vice President, National Security Advisor, Deputy National Security Advisor, Counsel to the President, Counsel to the National Security Adviser, and the Attorney General were consulted in August 2002 in advance of implementing use of the techniques with a particular detainee and concurred in its implementation as a matter of law and policy.”
At the July 29 meeting, Muller distributed a set of briefing slides that included details about waterboarding. Cheney and Rice both took special note of the slide on waterboarding, which showed that detainee Khalid Sheik Muhammed had been waterboarded 119 times.
The memo states: “The DCI stated that it was important for CIA to know that it was executing administration policy and not merely acting lawfully. The Vice President stated, and Dr. Rice and the attorney general agreed, that this was the case.
But the slides also contained precisely the kind of statements that the Senate report showed were inaccurate:
According to another memo, at a previous White House meeting in January 2003, Muller had “pointed out … that there was an arguable inconsistency between what the CIA was authorized to do and what at least some in the international community might expect in light of the Administration’s public statements.” The memo says that “[e]veryone in the room” — including Rice, Cheney (by video conference), Secretary of State Colin Powell and Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, “evinced understanding of the issue. CIA’s past and ongoing use of enhanced techniques was reaffirmed and in no way drawn into question.”
Some of the documents in the collection have been public for years. Others have been described before, but not published. The author of the collection’s overview is unknown.
Photo: White House/Eric Draper
My comments are being blocked, not by TI … but I will not stop until more of the millions they have already spent chasing the mind control rainbow, are wasted.
Or until I join the thousands that they have already killed.
My comments are being blocked, not by TI … but I will not stop until more of the millions they have already spent chasing the mind control rainbow, is wasted.
Or until I join the thousands that they have already killed.
CIA to Bush White House, “Are you sure we can do this?”
BWH, “Hell Yeah,”
CIA, “Even the creepy stuff from Cheney?”
BWH, “Especially the creepy stuff from Cheney. By the way Dick would like some pics and videos of your work, ah – you know, for the archives. ”
CIA, “Right.”
Justice without any accountability is not JUSTICE…….There are no excuses…only lies….SECRET doesn’t cover it – and unless people – all of them – are held accountable…there can be no justice
Seriously though, if we aren’t just going to sit back and allow these things to happen, what are we supposed to do? I have gotten out and protested – with the other 20 people who showed up. I have written letters. What would be the best thing to do now besides just wait for the worst things to happen?
After ruminating on this story for a couple of hours, one question keeps haunting me. Where do these people who are willing to torture another human being come from? That’s the one question from which several others form. Does someone or some entity put an ad in the paper “Sadists Wanted” or is there some clandestine school where torture 101 is taught with opportunites for advanced studies and post graduate degrees available? Is there a test you can take that will show the level of depravity needed to treat others that way? I’m not trying to come across as facetious, I really want to know. After the torturers have done their worst are they deprogrammed or just released back into the world of the reasonably sane? Are these people now my neighbors or are they kept in some sort of asylum ’til needed again? There is a threshold over which once crossed becomes extremely difficult if not impossible to return. Most of us have had impulses to do heinous things but thankfully most of us don’t yield to them. Those who’ve never had the urge to kill someone can count themselves fortunate as it’s a very unpleasant place in which to find oneself. From personal experience, those very few times in that situation left me feeling ill. That is not an admission of murder in the corporal sense but in the mind and heart, yes. There must be a better way to live. We take our youngest adult sons and daughters and teach them in the ways of war and wonder why suicide and PTSD flourish. The people who legitimized and legalized torture were the top executives of our country and yet there’s little hue and cry from the populace. Then Obama comes along admitting “We tortured some folks” but vowing to look ahead and not behind. Please speak up people. End of tirade, for now.
As, has already been pointed out, there will be no prosecution of the perpetrators, both those who ordered and carried out the torture, what is the point of calling out the illegalities carried out in our names? The verdict has been decided as not guilty beforehand. What will it take for the people to demand these people be prosecuted? These were people who tortured people. A crime. Two tiered system? More like a multi faceted system. At least Americans aren’t being tortured. Oh, that’s right, some are. When they come for you, who will stand in your defense?
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Martin_Niem%C3%B6ller
“When the Nazis came for the communists,
I remained silent;
I was not a communist.
When they locked up the social democrats,
I remained silent;
I was not a social democrat.
When they came for the trade unionists,
I did not speak out;
I was not a trade unionist.
When they came for the Jews,
I remained silent;
I wasn’t a Jew.
When they came for me,
there was no one left to speak out.” —– Martin Niemoller
I commend your efforts to attempt to keep this grand iniquity in the eye of the public Mr. Froomkin.
Unfortunately, the masses don’t dictate the economic order of the Planet and hence; have no clear path to reform the Federal Government dictatorship of the United States of America or any other state government.
Obviously many people are more than aware of the problems plaguing the intra-planetary government control systems on Earth.
Too bad that the masses are attempt to work WITHIN the system that the elites own and control —- a framework of their design —-to seek resolution to the problems that plague them.
Nothing will be resolved that way because the problem will not “fix” itself.
The whole system will need to be rejected by the masses…to include the obvious economic and religious control elements…before we can climb out of the hole within which the bulk of humanity has been living.
Therein lies the dilemma. Those in control must be removed from control at an international level or they will kill off large numbers of the masses through direct manipulation of biological and physical science mechanisms. Humans that survive will be allowed to remain on their planet only as absolute slaves which, does not jive well with inherent mind, spirit or soul of the essential human being.
I am older and have no fear of death however; younger people who are desiring and expecting some relative peace and continuity to be present within their life-spans would be wise to take immediate action to relieve Earth from these false control paradigms and governmental models that act to repress the nature of humanity and deliver doom to the planet.
Amen, Lyra. I too am older which, by virtue of time, gives both of us some added perspective which the younger ones simply cannot have. The present paradigm must end but power does not abdicate power to the powerless but through power. It’s a vicious cycle throwing off the yoke of one oppressor only to don the mantle of a new oppressor. Of necessity, an evolution in the way we think about society must replace the madness under which the world lives. Growing up in the 50s was a time of hopeful opportunities, I’m sure being white had a lot to do with the optimism, but now that’s been replaced with a bleak cynicism as opportunities become increasingly elusive “even for whites”. That was meant provocatively. I’m not spouting righteous indignation for my benefit, but for those who come after, namely our kids and grandkids and if we live long enough our great grandkids. Sorry for stepping on your astute comment Lyra but I guess my tirade from above wasn’t over. One more observation. Torture is bullying taken to extremes yet we decry the epidemic of bullying in our society. “Do as I say, not as I do”. Sound familiar? Looks like you struck a chord in me with this one Dan. Thanks.
No problem at all jgreen7801.
Torture of any living being should to be shunned by any morally sound individual or society of higher consciousness.
Your comments on this topic are necessary as is this article.
Thanks for the memos and documents. Obviously with a couple of sadistic friends like James Elmer Mitchell and Bruce Jessen, torture apologists don’t need enemies.
“Rizzo defended the use of waterboarding and sleep deprivation as “enhanced interrogation techniques” approved by the Justice Department in 2002. But the legal architect behind the black site program conceded that other practices, such as exposing prisoners to freezing temperatures and long periods of isolation in complete darkness, were not legally sanctioned.I would characterize them as torture. Those were not among the approved ‘enhanced interrogation techniques’ the Justice Department approved in writing in August 2002,” Rizzo said, referring to “Torture Memos” he legally cleared as the CIA’s chief legal officer during the CIA’s Rendition, Detention, and Interrogation Program.So those were clearly abuses, he continued.”— Huffingtonpost 12/10/2014
Again, it all boils down to Cheney, his orders to torture came from whispering in people’s ears. You will never find any documentation that he gave the green light. He’s an expert at covering his tracks.
Huh? Cheney covering his tracks? As we write, he is running about touting and bragging how he endorsed and ordered torture. Maybe if he would, he’d be able to cover his tracks, but currently it seems he is taking great pride in showing us all that he is above the law. And apparently, he is indeed.
For all of those people who say authoritarianism couldn’t happen here–it did. Ordinary people, who would act ethical under normal circumstances, lost their heads and forgot their ethics. This is just like a crazed Milgram experiment: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milgram_experiment
It should never happen again.
“I get by w/ a little help from my friends..’
re:
Bush-Cheney 9/11 Interview Won’t Be Formally Recorded
[snip]
‘The White House said on Tuesday that there would be no recording or formal transcription of the historic joint interview of President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney by the independent commission investigating the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
The interview, to begin at 9:30 a.m. on Thursday at the White House, will be recorded by two note takers, one from the White House. Under a pact with the White House that allowed all its 10 members in the interview, the commission is permitted to take a note taker, but not a recording device. The panel said it did not press for a formal transcription of the session, letting the White House decide.[..]
Mr. Bush will not be under oath, and the White House has been adamant that what he says should not be considered official testimony.
Legal scholars said the lack of an official transcript would give the White House some deniability and make it more difficult to use the president’s words as evidence in a future suit against the government.[..]
Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney have cleared much of their schedules to be ready for the session. Mr. Bush has prepared with Condoleezza Rice, the national security adviser, as well as with the White House counsel, Alberto R. Gonzales, who will sit in on the interview. Mr. Cheney’s office declined to give details of his preparations. White House officials would not say whether Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney had prepared together.
Commission members say they believe that they are under no formal time limit for the interview. Although the White House had offered one hour each for interviews of Mr. Bush and Mr. Cheney, they dropped that as part of an accord in which the president and vice president could be interviewed together..’
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/04/28/politics/28BUSH.html
A We Don’t Need No Stinking Badges Production
Drat. Censored Again.
The CIA was worried that it would get the same treatment Reagan gave to Oliver North.
There is not one person in that picture that should not stand trial for War Crimes.
If capital punishment was decreed for these criminals, however, my projection is that only one would suffer that fate: Condeleeza Rice.
Something extremely important that I don’t hear anyone address is how this has exposed our military members to being torture at the hands of other nations. Why is this ignored?
When I was in the military, on my ID was printed that we participate in the standards put forth in the Geneva Conventions. I felt a certain level of security in that at the time. I would certainly not want to be a military member anymore. Our enemies have multiplied due to our foreign policies, and they are more ruthless than ever.
It seems like the prevailing consensus was they could just take torture out of their bag of tricks until the GWOT was won(couple of years at most) and then slyly put it back in the bag without anyone noticing. The best laid plans of mice and men…….Wasn’t a very well thought out plan, was it? Buffoonery at the highest levels. We definitely didn’t get our money’s worth with these idiots at the helm. I want a refund.
Add a few more names to the WAR CRIMES INDICTMENT: ex-National Security Council legal advisor John Bellinger, Condoleeza Rice, Colin Powell and Donald Rumsfeld.
We ALL must remember that even IF some valuble information was extracted from torture (these claims appear more dubious by the day), THE ENDS DO NOT JUSTIFY THE MEANS!
How long is it going to take the World Court to bring all the Bush War Criminals to account for their crimes at The Hague? The fact that they are not, only means that they are protecting the Obama administration War Criminals.
Sadly, we do not subscribe to the court’s authority in cases dealing with Americans. This is because we are so ‘exceptional’.
What does happen sometimes is that US Officials are forced to curtail travel plans to avoid ‘Citizen’s Arrests’ in certain countries. Rumsfeld had to be rushed off of a stage in France, put on a plane to Germany and then shipped home to get him out of a situation in which he very well might have been remanded to the International Court in the Hague. Bush has twice been forced to cancel travel plans to Switzerland.
These people know they are wanted and the smarter ones don’t travel outside of the country.
For those that relies it, the United States of America has allowed George W Bush, Dick Cheney and others to commit grave war crimes, and there is no argument that this has happened Dick Cheney has even admitted it! How do we determine if it is a crime is the first priority, Under the US Constitution the United States President can sign foreign treaties, and Congress ratifies those treaties, they did this with The Geneva Conventions, not with standing the original comments that Bush and Co made in relation to the Prisoners of Afghanistan the Taliban and Al Qaida did not have Geneva Protections as Prisoners of war, (that has not been officially argued in the Supreme Court of the United States) the Supreme Court however did find in Hamden V Rumsfeld that those prisoners had at the least Common Article 3 Civilian status, that means under Geneva they had very specific rights, one of those rights was NOT TO BE TORTURED! I will get back there with the actual Convention articles shortly. Also in those articles there is specific rules that make it a Grave War Crime to make a law exempting a person who has committed a war crime from prosecution! It is also a grave War Crime to refuse to prosecute those that have committed a Grave War Crime! Now remember Geneva Conventions are US treaty law, but they are also on the Domestic Statute books! So on that basis all of those laws that Bush had Congress make in relation to exempting the executive (read the CIA and its operatives, but also Bush and Co themselves are in fact unconstitutional) We know that Geneva can over ride what the President has done because Hamden and Hamdi have in fact already done so!
Article 146
The High Contracting Parties undertake to enact any legislation necessary to provide effective penal sanctions for persons committing, or ordering to be committed, any of the grave breaches of the present Convention defined in the following Article.
Each High Contracting Party shall be under the obligation to search for persons alleged to have committed, or to have ordered to be committed, such grave breaches, and shall bring such persons, regardless of their nationality, before its own courts. It may also, if it prefers, and in accordance with the provisions of its own legislation, hand such persons over for trial to another High Contracting Party concerned, provided such High Contracting Party has made out a prima facie case.
Each High Contracting Party shall take measures necessary for the suppression of all acts contrary to the provisions of the present Convention other than the grave breaches defined in the following Article.
In all circumstances, the accused persons shall benefit by safeguards of proper trial and defence, which shall not be less favourable than those provided by Article 105 and those following of the Geneva Convention relative to the Treatment of Prisoners of War of August 12, 1949.
Article 147
Grave breaches to which the preceding Article relates shall be those involving any of the following acts, if committed against persons or property protected by the present Convention: wilful killing, torture or inhuman treatment, including biological experiments, wilfully causing great suffering or serious injury to body or health, unlawful deportation or transfer or unlawful confinement of a protected person, compelling a protected person to serve in the forces of a hostile Power, or wilfully depriving a protected person of the rights of fair and regular trial prescribed in the present Convention, taking of hostages and extensive destruction and appropriation of property, not justified by military necessity and carried out unlawfully and wantonly.
Article 148
No High Contracting Party shall be allowed to absolve itself or any other High Contracting Party of any liability incurred by itself or by another High Contracting Party in respect of breaches referred to in the preceding Article.
Those articles of the 4th schedule of the Geneva Conventions also have similar articles in the 3rd Schedule of the Geneva Conventions, It is a Grave breach to Torture, it is a grave breach to write laws allowing torture and don’t think that Presidential orders are not laws, they are, and it is a Grave Breach to refuse punishment
FURTHERMORE it is a grave breach for any other country not to attempt to prosecute such War Criminals if the Criminals are in their Jurisdictions! Remember when Rumsfeld refused to go to Germany because he got wind of a Prosecution team there and also Bush’s sudden change of plans to go to Switzerland! Every US President and Attorney General that refuses to Prosecute is in fact a War Criminal for failing to prosecute those that have both ordered and actually tortured prisoners!
Lastly we have the lawyers that gave the advice that these actions were lawful in this case YOO and BYBEE in the main but others as well, they need to be prosecuted as well, for without these unlawful opinions, there would not have been unlawful actions on the scale that occurred!
I remember losing my temper and shouting ‘you’re not supposed to believe thatlie, you’re supposed to believe this lie’. That’s generally a sign that one is lying too much. Lying, like anything else, is best done in moderation.
The CIA may have been confused by all the lies it was hearing from the US government. Still, I suppose the government was not strictly lying when they told the CIA they had no intention to prosecute them for torture. But governments are acutely aware that circumstances can change, sweeping an inimical regime to power. So there are no doubt extensive dossiers demonstrating that the CIA acted without authorization when torturing prisoners. That would only be prudent on the part of the government and of course they would have no incentive to inform the CIA of that fact.
So while the government was lying to the public, it was also lying to the CIA. So at least the behaviour of the government is consistent, even if their lies are not.
Give’em the pointy end Il Duce!
This is a smoking gun. It is fortunate for Bushco that the ever-reliable Eric Holder is still at the helm to bury it.
More like a cluster-Cheney, an appalling screwup in lying messaging. I’m not sure whether these documents, if admitted at their war-crimes trials, would be proof of guilt, conspiracy or an inability to form criminal intent. It’s truly bizarre.
Erich Holder responds … https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8105U1WY9ro
Yes, well, Brick’s suggested antidotes weren’t exactly free of powerful and obnoxious odors, either.
“You said it yourself, Big Daddy. Mendacity is a system we live in. Liquor is one way out, death is another…”
Apologies, Dan, this was meant as a reply to coram nobis’ Cat on a Hot Tin Roof reference below.
Yes, well, this story sort of begs for a bizarre simile. This kind of message-disconnect suggests Monty Python, with a touch of Marx Brothers. These people had to lie, I understand that, but they needed to keep everybody posted on what was the lie and what was the underlying evil, and how to explain it in public.
I’ve thought of Monty Python within two of these contexts recently – and one of them quite a lot. The first was wondering just yesterday if the “Ofcom bias police” would approve even half of Monty Python’s comedy – if originating today. The other often happens whenever reading Dan’s articles about the torture war crimes, and the black sites migrating to OUR cities, and I think to myself, “No one expected the American Inquisition…”
It really couldn’t have been otherwise, could it. It’s hard to interpret the existence/surfacing of these materials and the motivation behind the website ciasavedlives . One could argue on the surface that the premise is to rebut the Senate’s Report, but if it fails to do that, and presents more damning and Geneva-worthy evidence, it does make me wonder. Might the author intend to see how far Obama/DoJ can be pushed? It’s almost as if the author wanted to rub Obama’s nose in Bush and Cheney’s shit. It does make me wonder how large the pile of evidence has to get before someone, somewhere, sometime feels the need to confront it. If I were Obama I’d be wanting to accelerate that clock that ticks to the 2016 election. As in, Get me the hell out of here before someone really expects me to do something…. Or, before these bozos present me with the one “thing” I cannot ignore. Although, at this point, one could only wonder at the gravity of the “thing” that would have to be produced.
quoute”Although, at this point, one could only wonder at the gravity of the “thing” that would have to be produced.”unquote
I’d submit Cheney, has already admitted “he” was the one who authorized CIA to torture. If that isn’t enough to prosecute these scumbags..I don’t know what is.
http://www.politico.com/story/2014/12/dick-cheney-white-house-113566.html
Have you considered the CIA/NSA/FBI/DNI/DHS all or seperately may have some oh ohs on Obama which, like the Sword of Damocles, are suspended over his head just in case he decided to sic the DOJ on the Bush team? Just a thought(shared by many I’ll bet).
Nice to see something good come out of Georgetown other than a very anti Russian sentiment (ex. Inhofe’s recent fake photos that were received from an Ukrainian delegation which had a Georgetown Prof on the list & more), not to mention awards for Talbott in ’80’ back when he was with TIME magazine (same year Kissinger got his special citation~funny, they seem on opposite sides of the fence now on Russia), as well as in 85. http://isd.georgetown.edu/weintal-prize
Why does it seem like there were a couple of psychological experiments that come to mind like…
Milgram’s Experiment on Obedience to Authority
http://nature.berkeley.edu/ucce50/ag-labor/7article/article35.htm
“He concluded people obey either out of fear or out of a desire to appear cooperative”
& Stanford’s Prison Experiment
http://www.prisonexp.org/
…except, this is no experiment, 42 waterboarding sessions (that we know of), on Abu Zubaydah is worse than just a crime of authority, if the next president has any sense of justice at all they will send both Cheney & Bush to Venezuela or the Presido (that would be my pick).
quote”.. if the next president has any sense of justice at all they will send both Cheney & Bush to Venezuela or the Presido (that would be my pick).”unquote
Bullshit. The US already set a precedent for war criminals at Nuremberg. Even hanging is too good for these psychopaths. My pic would be the guillotine. In public. Broadcast round the planet if HD and hi def audio..just to hear them gulping before the lunette is released. Hell, let’s make it like the Superbowl. A 1/2 time entertainment extravaganza between Cheney’s and Bush’s executions with a close up video of their faces looking up from the basket for the last 30 seconds of their sickening existence on this planet. I can see Cheney’s face as I type.
” a rogue administration?”
I sound like coram nobis here busting out the old quote:
‘April 6, 1977: Nixon: ‘If the President Does It, That Means It’s Not Illegal’’
“No man is above the law. Not even the president.” -Richard Nixon
The accompanying photo just drips scumbaggery. And then I read the essay…
The photo caption should read, “Come on, we gotta keep our stories straight!”
Astonishing story.
Makes one want to lift a shoe to check for dogdoo…doesn’t it?
Thank you very much for staying on gthe torture beat, Dan – one day!
Plus: I wish you did more regular posting here, Column-ing along with reporting. Possible?